Brian Coffey
Brian Coffey (June 8, 1905 - April 14, 1995) was an Irish poet and publisher. Two of his long poems published in later years, Advent (1975) and Death of Hektor (1979), are widely considered to be among the most important works in the canon of Irish poetic modernism. He also ran Advent, a small press, during the 1960s and 1970s. Life Youth Coffey was born in Dublin in the suburb of Dún Laoghaire. His father, Denis Coffey, was a professor of anatomy, who served as first president of University College Dublin (UCD) from 1908 to 1940. Brian Coffey attended the Mount St Benedict boarding school in Gorey, co. Wexford, from 1917 to 1919 and then James Joyce's old school. Clongowes Wood College, in Clane, co. Kildare, from 1919 until 1922. In 1923, he went to France to study for the Bachelor's degree in Classical Studies at the Institution St Vincent, Senlis, Oise. Coffey entered UCD in 1924 and earned advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. He also represented the college in boxing tournaments. While still at college, Coffey began writing poetry. He published his first poems in UCD's The National Student under the pseudonym Coeuvre. These poems, which have never been collected, showed the influence of French Symbolism and of T.S. Eliot. During this time, Coffey met Denis Devlin, and together they published a volume entitled Poems in 1930. Coffey and Devlin both also participated in college dramatics, taking roles in French plays. Paris In the early 1930s, Coffey moved to Paris where he studied Physical Chemistry under Jean Baptiste Perrin, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1926. He completed these studies in 1933, and his Three Poems was printed in Paris by Jeanette Monnier that same year, as was the poem card Yuki Hira, which was admired by AE and William Butler Yeats. He also became friendly with other Irish writers based in the city, including Thomas MacGreevy and Samuel Beckett. In his 1934 essay Recent Irish Poetry, Beckett picked out Coffey and Devlin as forming 'the nucleus of a living poetic in Ireland'. He then entered the Institut Catholique de Paris that year to work with the noted French philosopher Jacques Maritain, taking his licentiate examination in 1936. He them moved to London for a time and contributed reviews and a poem to Eliot's Criterion magazine. On trips home to Dublin, he contributed to programmes on literary topics on Raidió Teilifís Éireann radio and published poems in Ireland Today. He returned to Paris in 1937 as an exchange student to work on his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the work of Thomas Aquinas. In 1938, Coffey's 2nd volume of poetry, Third Person, was published by George Reavey's Europa Press. He also contributed translations to the same publisher's Thorns of Thunder (1936), the first collection of Paul Éluard's work published in English. The poems of this period saw Coffey shake off his earlier influences and begin to find his own voice, but, for a variety of reasons, Third Person was to be his last poetry publication for a quarter century. St. Louis During World War II, Coffey taught in schools in London and Yorkshire, leaving his young family in Dublin. After the war, he returned to Paris and completed his doctoral thesis on the idea of order in the writings of Thomas Aquinas]]. The family then moved so that Coffey could take up a teaching post at the Jesuit Saint Louis University. During this period, Coffey seems to have done very little if any creative writing as he focused mainly on philosophical work based on his thesis, publishing a number of essays in The Modern Schoolman. By the early 1950s, Coffey became uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including the nature of his work, his distance from Ireland and the pressures that inevitably came to bear on an academic who had previously associated with well-know left-wing writers in Paris. For these reasons, he began to look for a suitable opportunity to leave the United States, and resigned, possibly on a matter of academic principle, in 1952. Later life and work In 1952, Coffey returned to live in London and, from 1973, Southampton. He began again to publish his poetry and translations, mainly of French poetry. The first work in English to appear after this period of silence was Missouri Sequence, apparently begun in St. Louis but first appearing in the University Review in 1962. This poem deals with the experience of exile, memories of the poet's dead parents and the premature birth of a child. It is written in a much more conventional syntax than most of Coffey's work and, thanks to this greater accessibility is one of his most widely-read works. Over the next decade or so, he published regularly in the University Review (later known as the Irish University Review), a relationship that culminated in the 1975 special issue. This featured an introduction by Dr. J. C. C. Mays, a selection of translations from the French, the satire Leo and Advent, a meditation on death inspired by the death of the poet's son in a motorcycle accident. The poem is in seven sections, based, according to Coffey in an interview with Parkman Howe, on the canonical hours of the Catholic Church. Another key work of this period was Death of Hektor, which uses the myth of Troy as a framework for a meditation on war and its victims. The trade editions of Advent and Death of Hektor were both published by the Menard Press. He also edited Devlin's Collected Poems, first for a University Review Devlin special issue and later as a book from Dolmen Press. He also set up his own publishing enterprise, Advent Press, which published work by himself and by younger writers he wanted to support. He learned printmaking and produced a good deal of original work, including an interesting set of images based on the plays of his old friend Beckett. His interest in visual art also led to some experiments in concrete poetry, most notably his 1966 Advent Press book Monster: A Concrete Poem. His work was championed by a number of younger Irish poets, especially Michael Smith and Trevor Joyce. These two published poetry, prose and translations by Coffey in their journal, The Lace Curtain and his Selected Poems (1971) from their New Writers Press imprint. This book was instrumental in helping establish his reputation as a leading Irish exponent of Modernist poetry. The appearance in 1991 of a major selection Poems and Versions 1929-1990 and his translations Poems from Mallarmé helped confirm his status as one of the leading Irish modernists. He died at the age of 89, and was buried in Southampton, England. Writing Coffey's work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic culture. Publications Poetry *''Poems'' (by Brian Coffey & Denis Devlin). Dublin: A. Thom, 1930. *''Three Poems''. Paris: Librairie Jeannette Monnier, 1933. *''Third Person''. London: Europa Press (Europa Poets No. 7), 1938. *''Monster: A concrete poem'' (illustrated by John Parsons). London: Advent, 1966. *''Selected Poems''. Dublin: New Writers Press, 1971. *"Advent" , in Irish University Review, 5:1 (Spring 1975), and Do. London: Menard Press 1986. *"Death of Hektor", in Irish University Review, 5:1 (Spring 1975); **also published as Death of Hektor (illustrated by S.W. Hayter). Guilford, UK: Circle Press 1979. *''The Big Laugh''. Dublin: Sugar Loaf, 1976. *''Topos and Other Poems''. Bath, UK: Mammon Press 1981. *''Death of Hektor: Poem'' (1982) *''Advent'' (1986) *''Chanterelles: Short Poems, 1971-1983''. Cork, Ireland: Melmoth Press, 1985. *''Poems and Versions, 1929-1990'' (preface by J C.C. Mays). Dublin: Dedalus Press, 1991. Non-fiction *‘The Philosophy of Science and the Scientific Attitude: I’, in The Modern Schoolman 36 (1948), pp.23-35 *‘The Notion of Order According to St. Thomas Aquinas’, in The Modern Schoolman 28, 1 (1949), pp.1-18 *‘Notes on Modern Cosmological Speculation’, in The Modern Schoolman 29:3 (1952), pp.183-96 *‘Memory's Murphy Maker’, in Threshold vol. 17 (1962), p.33 * ‘Of Denis Devlin: Vestiges, Sentences, Presages’, in Irish University Review 2:10 (1965), pp.3-18 *‘A Note on Rat Island’, in Irish University Review 3:8 (1966), pp.25-28 *‘Denis Devlin: Poet of Distance’, in Place, Personality and the Irish Writer (edited by Andrew Carpenter). Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1977, pp. 137-157. *‘Extracts from "Concerning Making"’, in The Lace Curtain 6 (Autumnn 1978), pp.31-37. *"About Poetry", in Dedalus Irish Poets: An anthology by J.F. Deane). Dublin: Dedalus Press 1992, pp.253-254. Translated *[[Stephane Mallarmé], Dice Thrown Never Will Annul Chance (translation of Coup de Dés). Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1965. **included in Stephane Mallarmé, Selected Poems and Prose (edited by Mark Ann Caws). New York: New Directions 1982. *Stephane Mallarmé, Poems from Mallarmé. Dublin: New Writers Press / Menard Press, 1991. Edited *Denis Devlin, Poems. University Review Issue, 1963; Dolmen 1964. *Denis Devlin, The Heavenly Foreigner (edited with introduction by Brian Coffey). Dublin: Dolmen Press / London: Oxford University Press, 1967. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Ricorso.net.Brian Coffey (1905-1995), Ricorso.net. Web, July 6, 2014. See also *List of Irish poets References *Coughlan, Patricia & Davis, Alex (editors): Modernism and Ireland: The Poetry of the 1930s (1995), *Howe, Parkman: "Brian Coffey: An Interview" in Éire Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies. 13:1 (1978): 113-123. *Keatinge, Benjamin & Woods, Aengus (editors): Other Edens: The Life and Work of Brian Coffey. Irish Academic Press (2009). *Mays, Dr. J. C. C.: Introduction to Irish University Review, Vol. 5., No. 1 (Spring 1975) (Coffey Special Issue). *Mills, B: Behind all Archetypes: on Brian Coffey (1995). *Moriarty, Donal. The Art of Brian Coffey. (2000). Notes External links ;Poems *Brian Coffey in Contemporary Irish Poetry ;About *Brian Coffey at Irish Literature Exchange *Brian Coffey, 89, A Poet From Ireland Who Taught Science obituary, New York Times *Obituary: Brian Coffey in The Independent *Brian Coffey (1905-1995) at Ricorso.net. * The Poetry of Brian Coffey by Fred Beake ;Etc. * The Brian Coffey papers at the University of Delaware Library Category:1905 births Category:1995 deaths Category:Irish poets Category:Irish writers Category:Irish modernist poets Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:People from Southampton Category:People from County Dublin Category:People from Dún Laoghaire Category:Old Clongownians Category:Catholic Institute of Paris alumni Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Catholic poets Category:Irish Roman Catholics Category:Modernist poets Category:Alumni of University College Dublin